


What Light Shines

by ArchaeopteryxDreams



Category: Original Work
Genre: Animal Transformation, Anthropomorphic, Fables - Freeform, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Style, Gen, Happy Ending, Magic, Mild Peril, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29117763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchaeopteryxDreams/pseuds/ArchaeopteryxDreams
Summary: Shine, a young rabbit shunned by her kind for her shape-shifting ability, sets out on a journey to find where she belongs.
Kudos: 1





	What Light Shines

Once, in a dark-shadowed forest, there was a newborn rabbit. A young kit curled into a brown lump, quiet as a mushroom. A passing woodcutter nearly passed her by but he stopped — for a glint of light had caught his eye. The kit held a jewel of endless colours, its facets catching what small light there was in this mushroomed place.  
The child was important, thought the woodcutter. She had to be. What fates would leave one so small, and not intend her to be found?

He brought the kit back to Warren Village to join her own kind. She was raised in many bedrooms, fed at many tables. The village rabbits worked hard and had little enough for their own kits but they spread the dinner greens into one more bowl. Shine — as they named the orphan kit — always said "Thank you," and otherwise she was quiet as the glade she came from. Rabbits might have forgotten her except for the bright glint of her jewel, the faceted rainbow she wore on a string around her neck.

Times were hard and they only grew harder. Clouds loomed over the village but gave no rain. The men left to seek work and returned with empty hands, to homes with scant litters of two or three children. Most dreadful of all, sometimes the does saw strange shadows in her home — shapes with claws sharp as daggers, or the shaggy bulk of a predator. But they looked again and found only Shine, her eyes wide and confused.  
The village was struggling, some said. The village was gripped by misfortune, some said. With each passing day, more rabbits whispered to their neighbours that Warren Village was cursed.

One day, Shine was sent to the river to fetch water. She was given an old bucket to use.  
"Bring back all you can," one of the village does told her, before returning to her conversation.  
Glad for this chance to help, Shine hurried to the filled the bucket full and hurried straight back — but the bucket had a hair-thin crack. As Shine hurried, all her water dripped away.  
She returned to the village does — and too late, she saw the scant few drops of water at the bottom of her bucket.  
"Is that all you could bring?!" the doe cried.  
Shine was frightened, and she couldn't speak.  
The other villagers looked into the bucket. "The river is dry," they said. "We are wracked with hunger and now with drought! We must be cursed!"  
Shrinking before them, Shine knew this was her fault. In the blink of an eye, she changed form into a monstrous chimera, bleating sadly through all three heads.  
The other rabbits shrieked. Shine shifted quickly back to her rabbit self but the shrieking continued.  
"We've struggled ever since this foundling set foot in the village," one said. "And she has a terrible power. She is our curse!"  
The rabbits of the village raised their voices now in anger, not fear.  
"She must leave!"  
"She will doom us all!"  
The woodcutter watched with sad eyes and he said nothing.

With tears welling in her eyes, Shine dropped the bucket and ran from Warren Village. She had only her namesake jewel about her neck and a sorrow in her heart. The path out of Warren Village led her through trees, through mossy stones, and toward the Witch's house.  
The Witch was an old crow with a silver sheen to her feathers. Whenever a Warren Village rabbit began to cough, she arrived and pulled a packet of strong-smelling medicine from under her wing, and the rabbit was soon enough well. She might take pity, Shine thought.

The Witch looked once at Shine's face and, with a spread wing, invited her inside. By the warm hearth fire, she listened to the whole awful tale of Shine being shunned from her home.  
"I came to ask you what I should do," Shine finally confessed.  
"You shift into other creatures, hmm?" The Witch clacked her beak. "Quite remarkable. But some creatures are scared of what they don't understand. I am called Witch because I know the secrets of the earth. Secrets can be frightening but so long as I mend the sick, it is fine and well."  
"I don't know how I could be useful," Shine said quietly. "I'm no good at digging or farming. This shape-changing is the only skill I have and all it does is makes other rabbits afraid of me."  
The old bird turned to her supply of bundled herbs. Shine hoped for a glamour, some spell to turn her into a better-liked creature. But the crow turned back with a green bundle in her talons. She offered a bundle of simple clover. Shine accepted it and gratefully, she ate.  
"You are a child of no one in Warren Village," the crow said. "This much is clear. You must ask the great Leviathan for guidance. He is older than the earth, brother of time itself. He will know which path you should seek."  
"Thank you," Shine whispered.  
Putting a gentle wing over Shine's shoulders, the Witch said, "It will be a frightful journey, many times more trying than your scare in the village today. Be strong, kit. Guard that fine jewel of yours and don't turn back."

  
With one paw on her namesake jewel — just to be sure it still hung there — Shine set out walking toward the west, where it was said that the Leviathan made his home. She walked farther than she had ever seen before, past the forest's edge and over fields of browning, wilting grass. There was no path, no road, only the enormity of the sky and earth.  
Each night, Shine curled up in the lee of a boulder or a stunted tree. She watched the glorious field of stars above, saw patterns and lines in the heavens, and she felt a little less alone.

One night, her long ears caught footsteps, thudding feet and rasping breath. She trembled as an ogre rounded the boulder, its tusks shining terrible in the moonlight. Ogres ate little lone rabbits like her. This one snarled with delight as its eyes landed on her. But before Shine could even think, she was standing on four long legs — transformed into a horse — and she ran from there like the fleet wind.

She didn't stop running, not even when the ogre was leagues behind her. This was Shine's curse and she ought to get used to it. The jewel bounced against her chest with each stride. Gradually, Shine's fears drained away and she returned to her rabbit self. And she kept walking. Her old life was far behind and the Leviathan's mountain stood on the horizon.

The grass turned lush and green. Shine missed the paw-made bread and crisp alfalfa of Warren Village, but she was still grateful for food. The grass led to a river — a roaring river with churning, dark water, the other bank far off.  
"How can I cross?" she murmured. And she thought of searching for a bridge, or a rope, but her heart said no. She had escaped a fearsome ogre. She had travelled far all on her own, and found strength thus far. Why could she not cross a river?  
She became an otter in that moment, a muscular creature with webbed feet. Shine dove into the water and she darted through the river's dark currents. She surfaced on the other side. Farther again from her troubles. Shine shook the water from her fur and returned to her rabbit self, and for a moment she stood on that riverbank, looking back the way she came. With a touch to her jewel — to be sure it was still there on its waterlogged string — Shine kept on.

The green fields turned to gulleys and marshland. Shine hopped over slimy puddles, clambering over the knobs of tree roots. It was slow journeying but she caught glimpses of the Leviathan's mountain through the gnarled treetops and each glimpse gave her strength.  
But soon, she noticed black spots following her through the brambles. As she stopped to watch them, the black spots came closer — and they were the bottomless eyes of a dozen goblins.  
"Look here! A treasure," they hissed. "Look here, a gem!" They crept closer on silent feet.  
Shine clutched her jewel in her paws. "You can't have it," she said.  
Grinning, the goblins reached for their clubs.  
She had journeyed so far, and found such bravery buried in her modest self. She would not give in. She would not be afraid. Shine became a tiger, suddenly enormous and rippling with strength. She reared tall over the goblins, and she showed her teeth and roared. Croaking terrified, they all fled, scrambling away on the slimy rocks.  
Shine stayed as the tiger for a moment, catching her breath through pointed teeth. When she shifted back to her rabbit self, she spent a further moment holding her jewel, the namesake facets she was so very grateful to have. And then Shine kept on.

She finally reached the mountainside, the craggy rock stretching up into the clouds. Shine saw not one entrance, but many dark holes leading inside. The Leviathan's mountain had more paths than a honeycomb had cells.  
Which one should she take, Shine wondered? How was she to decide? By simply trying each one? There had to be a way to see.  
She was an eagle, then, seeing the mountain through keen eyes. She beat her wings and circled over the mountainside, peering down each opening. And at the heart of only one tunnel, there was a glimmering of light.  
Shine landed at that tunnel, and as her rabbit self, she entered.

  
The tunnel led into darkness, into the silence of the mountain's depths. The walls narrowed until she couldn't fit through, so she became a mouse scurrying onward. The walls narrowed further, so she became a cricket and still crept forward.

Just as the walls squeezed her six legs and Shine thought of turning back, there was light. A thousand rich hues of light, filling a cavern and reflecting off the crystalline coils of the great Leviathan.  
Shine shifted back to her rabbit self, and and she fell to her knees. In the presence of one so radiant, she still felt herself as small as an insect.  
"Hmm, hmm. You have journeyed long to get here," the Leviathan said in a voice like the rumbling earth. He bent his serpentine neck, lowered his head down and down to meet eyes with Shine. "What troubles you so?"  
"Great Leviathan," Shine whispered. "I didn't know what else to do. All I knew was that I had to find my way."  
"And no one but my child would have succeeded. Welcome, dear one." With the whip-thin tip of his tail, he lifted the faceted jewel off Shine's chest, turning it to throw bright coins of light. "I have been looking for this."  
The Leviathan turned his tail over — and there, a patch of leathery skin was missing its crystal scale. The Leviathan touched that spot to Shine's necklace and the jewel melted off its string, rejoining the brilliant creature it had come from.  
And as he hummed a pleased note, Shine gripped the empty string in both paws, her heart sinking like a stone. She was surrounded by light but she had nothing now, not even a namesake.  
"Shine, my dear child. Don't fret."  
The tail tip pressed her chin upward, so she looked into the dark ocean depths of the Leviathan's eyes.  
"There is more. Let me show you."

And when Shine blinked her eyes and reopened them, she stood on a mountaintop far above the clouds, with the Leviathan coiled beside her. Wind shoved past her, cold and stormy. The clouds below were dark as ashes, and below that, the land lay yellowed and weary.  
"This realm has suffered," the Leviathan said. "With each generation, light and joy have grown ever more scarce. It is time to right this world. You can bring back its shine."  
And Shine awoke in that moment. She filled with power, filled and overflowed and saw a bounty pour out of her body. Creatures bounding away down the mountainside, light and stars swirling into the sky, song and laughter and all things good washing outward to soothe the land.

When it was done, she was a simple rabbit gasping for breath, paw pressed to her chest where her jewel used to be. The fur there was warm as a fireplace ember. She looked up at the Leviathan.  
"Was that why I ... Why I kept changing shape—" She saw a scaled dragon hand before her, not her own paw, and Shine shrieked.  
"It was. But you may be a rabbit if that makes you happy, Shine. You may be anything and everything you wish. Go now — and bring your light to all corners of this land."  
Willing herself back into rabbit shape, Shine turned her paws over to see her own familiar, ordinary fur. "That is my path?"  
"Oh, child." The Leviathan's eyes danced. "All I know is what you are. What you become is up to you."  
She smiled, finally finding a piece of joy to hold onto. The Leviathan touched her chin once more. And the next time Shine blinked she was elsewhere, paw held tight to her own warm-furred chest.

She stood on a riverbank, looking through dark, withering trees. Looking at the path villagers walked to fetch water. Shine was back in Warren Village but she couldn't bear to call it home. Letting out a sigh, she looked down into the slow-wandering river current.  
There was the rabbit face she knew, the face of someone's child. And on the spot her jewel used to rest, her fur was now a rainbow of colours, like the jewel's essence had leaked out — or like something within Shine had finally freed itself.

She didn't need to return to Warren Village. Shine was full of light and she could forge a path wherever she pleased. So she touched the clay bank at her feet, letting green grass and clover grow outward and cover the bare earth. It kept onward, rippling across the water, soaking a little joy into the village's outskirts. It would no longer be cursed, at least.

With no more reason to stay, Shine became a glittering sprite and she flew into the sky, trailing light behind her. Forever after, she was free.


End file.
